Governance

1. Governance, the State and
the Politics of Development
Adrian Leftwich
ABSTRACT
Current western aid and development policy aims to promote ‘good gover-
nance’ in the third world. Few would deny that competent, open and fair
administrationis both a worthyaimand a self-evidentrequirementof develop-
ment.However, thecurrent orthodoxyclearly illustratesthe technicist fallacy,
which is implicit in the following quotation from Pope, that the effective
administrationor ‘management’ of development is essentially a technical or
practical matter. This article argues that development is fundamentally a
political matter and that it is illusory to conceive of good governance as
independentof the forms of politicsand type of state which alone can gener-
ate, sustain and protect it.
‘For Forms of Government, let fools contest;
Whate’er is best administered,is best.’
(Pope, 1734: Bk 3, lines 303-4).
INTRODUCTION
Threemajorfeatures definecontemporary western aid and overseasdevelop-
ment policy. The firstis the use of aid to promote open, ‘marketfriendly’and
competitiveeconomies (World Bank, 1991: 1).This objectivewas embodied
in the new conditionality of structural adjustment lending developed in the
1980s (Mosley et al., 1991: ch. 1). Two further (and sometimes related)
features have been added to the policy in the 1990s. These are support for
democratization and the improvement of human rights records, on the one
hand, and insistenceon what has come to be called ‘goodgovernance’on the
other. Put simply, the overall thrust of this new development orthodoxy is
that societiescharacterizedby these features-essentially,capitalist democ-
racies -promote both peace and prosperity becausethey generateeconomic
growth and do not go to war with each other (Doyle, 1983: Hurd, 1990).
With regard to structural adjustment, however, there is plenty of evidence
to show that where it has taken place, it has not alwaysbeen an immediateor
sufficientguarantee that economieswill prosper and development occur: the
record has been very patchy (Mosleyet al., 1991:ch. 10;Nelson, 1990~:
321-
4; World Bank, 1990:2), especially in Africa (Financial Times, 1993:3).
I am grateful to David Held, John Peterson, Geoffrey Hawthorn, Peter Larmour and
anonymous reviewers for constructive comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I alone,
however, am responsible for the arguments developed here.
Developmen! and Change Vol. 25 (1994), 363-386.0 Instituteof Social Studies 1994.Published
by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Rd, Oxford OX4 lJF, UK.

2. 364 Adrian Left wich
Moreover, adjustment has often had destabilizingeffects by imposingheavy
burdens on the poor who have responded in predictableways, as the surge in
food riots in the 1980shas shown (Walton and Seddon, 1994: ch. 1).
As for the promotion of democracy, there are powerful theoretical
grounds for doubting that democratization-especially when premature -
can universally provide the appropriate political forms for either good
governanceor sustained economic development.As Przeworski has argued,
‘social and economic conservatism may be the necessary price for democ-
racy’ (1988:80).Yet effectivedevelopmenthas often required that somequite
radical stepsare taken early on in a developmentalcycle. Thesemight include
land reform or wage restraint, which arepreciselythe kind of measureswhich
may alienate major socio-economic groups whose consent is necessary for
stable democracy. There is also abundant empirical evidence to show that
many of the successful examples of ‘late’ development since the mid-
nineteenthcentury, as in Germany,Japan, Korea or Thailand, have occurred
under conditionswhich have not remotely approximatedcompetitivedemoc-
racy (Amsden, 1991; Fukui, 1992; Gerschenkron, 1962; Girling, 198l),
though some have moved or are now moving in a democraticdirection, as in
Indonesia or Korea (Liddle, 1992;Chung-in Moon, 1988).As I have argued
elsewhere (Leftwich, 1993: 610-1 5), democratization in the socio-political
and economic conditions which prevail in much of the third world and
elsewhere is likely to engender political turbulence and also blow stable
‘market friendly’ development strategies wildly off course.’ As the 1990s
unfold, therefore, it seems likely that we shall see a period of democratic
reversal, not consolidation, in much of the developing world and parts of
eastern Europe.
But what of ‘good governance’? What are its implications for develop-
ment? While it can hardly be doubted that this is an essential feature of any
successful development process, I argue that the current preoccupation with
good governanceis naive and simplistic. It is part of the technicist illusion,
illustrated by Pope’s quotation at the start of this article, which holds that
there is always an administrative or managerial ‘fix’in the normally difficult
affairsof human societiesand organizations,and that this also appliesto the
field of development. This is especially noticeable in the World Bank’s
approach which presents governance almost as if it were an autonomous
administrative capacity, detached from the turbulent world of politics and
the structure and purpose of the state. Where good governance is presented
as part of a wider conception of democratic governance (as in the case of
major western governments), there appears to be little awarenessof how few
democracy-sustainingconditionsmay be found in many third world societies
(Gills and Rocamora, 1992: 50411).
1. This is part of a wider argument about the centrality of politics in development(Leftwich,
1994).

3. The Politics o
f Development 365
Against this approach I shall argue that an effective public capacity for
promoting development is not a function of good governance, as currently
understood, but of the kind of politics and state that can alone generate,
sustain and protect it. As the empirical evidence shows, it has been the
existence of effective ‘developmental states’ (whether democratic or not)
which has accounted for the most successful records of economic develop-
ment in the third world over the last thirty years. Unattractive as many of
these states may be from a liberal or socialist point of view, they have been
highly effectivein raisingthe materialwelfare of the majority of their citizens
within a generation. Understanding the institutional structures and politics
of these states is a contribution which the disciplineof Politics can uniquely
make. I shall thus also be arguingthe more general case for bringing Politics
back centrally into Development Studies, from where it has been excluded
for too long.
Before doing so, however, let me define briefly the conception of politics
used here (Leftwich, 1983: ch. 1). I start from the assumption that human
societiesare characterized by a diversityof interests,preferences, values and
ideas. Each of these constitutes or directly involves resources, or ways of
doing things with resources,which individuals or groups seek to promote or
protect. In general, people prefer to get their way: but they also have to live
together and cooperate if they are to prosper, and so constant war and
outright victory in dispute is not a viable long-term solution to the problem
of diversity of interests, although it often happens. With one possible
exceptioq2 the human species is the only one to have evolved a set of
conscious processes for trying to sort out or resolve these differences. These
processesare what I call politics,which I defineas all the activitiesof conflict,
cooperation and negotiation involved in the use, production and distribution
of resources, whether material or ideal, and whether at local, national or
international levels.It will be clear from this definitionwhy all ‘development’
is so inescapably political, for at any point in any developmental sequence
what is crucially at issue is how resources are to be used and distributed in
new ways and the inevitable disputes arising from calculations about who
will win and who will lose as a result.
ORIGINS OF THE CONCERN WITH ‘GOVERNANCE’3
In contemporary usage, the concept of good governance has two main
meanings. The first and more limited meaning is associated with the World
Bank (see below) which interprets it in primarily administrativeand mana-
gerial terms. The second meaning, associated with western governments, is
2. The best account of this may be found in de Waal‘s classic study of Chimpanzee Politics
(1982).
3. In this and the next section, I have drawn on my ‘Governance, Democracy and
Development in the Third World’ (Leftwich, 1993).

4. 366 Adrian Leftwich
more political. While it involves a concern for sound administration, it also
includes an insistence on competitive democratic politics as well. The two
meanings are often confused with each other, and sometimes overlap, but
they need to be kept distinct. For the purposesof this paper, I concentrate on
the first and narrower administrative meaning since the second and wider
version is much more concerned with the relationship of democracy and
development,which I have dealt with elsewhere (Leftwich, 1993).
It also needs to be said that insistenceon good governance and democracy
as a condition of aid isnot altogethernew in the historyof western aid policy.
Such conditionality, for instance, lay at the heart of President Kennedy’s
doomed Alliance for Progress initiative in Latin America in the 1960s
(Robinson, 1993: 58-9). However, concern to promote good governance(in
Latin America and elsewhere) was in practice regularly eclipsed by foreign
policy considerations or overseas economic interests. Indeed, by their own
current criteria, western governments and the major internationa: institu-
tions, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, regularly
supported ‘bad‘governanceand cruelly authoritarian regimes. For instance,
forbidden by its Articlesof Agreementfromusingexplicitly ‘political’criteria
in its lending operations (IBRD, 1989:8),the World Bank has loaned to both
democratic and non-democratic member governments, whether military or
civil.Western governmentsregularlyprovided systematiceconomic,political
and military aid for authoritarian regimes such as Argentina, Chile under
Pinochet, Iran and South Korea, as well as some of the least liberal, most
corrupt or straightforwardly incompetent governments,such as Iraq, Zaire,
Haiti and much of sub-Saharan Africa (Barya, 1993: 18).
Why did all this change? Why did western governments begin to take a
serious interest in good governance and democracy from the late 1980s? I
think there have been four main influences: the experience of structural
adjustment lending, the dominance of official neo-liberalism (or neo-
conservatism)in the west, the collapse of officialcommunist regimes and the
rise of pro-democracy movements in the developing world and elsewhere.
The experience of structural adjustmentin the 1980s
‘Structural adjustment’ is the generic term used to describe a package of
economic and institutional measures which the IMF, the World Bank and
individualwestern aid donors-sometimessingly, but more often in concert
-sought to persuade many developingcountries to adopt during the 1980s
in return for a new wave of policy-oriented loans (Cammacket al., 1993: 11-
13;Mosley et al., 1991:ch. 1). The aim of adjustment lending was to shatter
the dominant post-war state-led development paradigm and overcome the
problems of developmentalstagnation by promoting open and freecompeti-
tive market economies, supervisedby minimal states. The general pattern of
adjustment packages usually involved two main stages, ‘stabilization’ and

5. The Politics of Development 367
‘adjustment’.Stabilizationnormally meant immediatedevaluation and often
quite drastic public expenditure cuts. Adjustment followed and sought to
transform economic structures and institutions through varying doses of
deregulation, privatization, dismantling or diminishing allegedly over-sized
and rambling public bureaucracies, reducing subsidies and encouraging
realistic prices to emerge as a stimulusto greater productivity, especially for
export (Mosley and Toye, 1988:403-41; Nelson, 1990a:2-5).
When people change the way they use resources, however, they change
their relations with each other (Stretton, 1976: 3). Structural adjustment in
the economiesof developingcountriescertainlyinvolvedprofound changein
the use, production and distribution of resources. This has inevitably given
rise to both winners and losers (Haggard and Kaufmann, 1989b), as in
Ghana, Zambia and Nigeria (Callaghy, 1990), and in some ‘new democra-
cies’ (Haggard and Kaufmann, 1989a). Those who stood to lose often
included bureaucrats, public sector workers, party officials, farmers and
manufacturers. They all had somethingto fear from reduction in the size of
the public service, diminution of the power of the party-state, more compe-
tition, withdrawalof subsidiesand freertrade. But the poor alsolost, for they
often experiencedsharp increasesin basic food prices as well as medical and
education services (Bienen and Waterbury, 1989; Demery and Addison,
1987;Glewwe and de Tray, 1988;R.H. Green, 1986,1988;Longhurst et al.,
1988).
These are some of the reasons why adjustment has been so political
(Nelson, 1989),for no significantchange occursin societywithout destabiliz-
ing some status quo, without decoupling some coalition and building
another, without challenging some interests and promoting others. Thus
what becameclear in the course of the 1980swas that the ability to plan and
implement adjustment was largely a consequence of both political commit-
ment, capacity and skill, as well as bureaucratic competence, independence
and probity (Healey and Robinson, 1992:91, 155).4
However those who stood to lose from adjustment were often located in,
or closely associated with, the state apparatus; hence they could use their
influence to curtail or dilute the programmes, and often did. Paradoxically,
therefore, effectiveadjustment in practice has required a strong, determined
and relatively autonomous state, whether democratic or not (Nelson, 1989:
9-10; Whitaker, 1991: 345). This had been the case in Ghana (Callaghy,
1990),Chile(Stallings, 1990),Costa Rica (Nelson, 1990b),Turkey(Mosleyet
al., 1991: ch. 10) and Indonesia (Soesastro, 1989); but not in Zambia
4. John Waterbury (1989: 39, 59, amongst others, has made the crucial point that effective
adjustmentinvolvesthe carefulmanagementof a regime’s‘basicsupportcoalition’,even in
authoritariansystems.This only servesto highlight the centrality of politicsin all forms of
change and development,especially where radical shifts in resource use and distribution
are entailed.

6. 368 Adrian Leftwich
(Gulhati, 1989), India (Kohli, 1989), the Philippines (Haggard, 1990a),
Jamaica (Nelson, 1990b) or Zaire (Callaghy, 1989). The significance of a
strong state seemsto have been lost on the prevailing orthodoxy which aims,
in part, to reduce the scope and scale of state power through both economic
and political reform.
The experience with adjustment confronted the international institutions
and bilateral donors with the reality of incompetent and often corrupt
governmentin many developingcountries (Lancaster, 1993: 9; World Bank,
1991: 128-47).This was especiallytrue of sub-Saharan Africa and it was this
that had, in part, led the Bank to identifypoor governanceas a major source
of the African crisis in its major report on the continent, From Crisis to
Sustainable Growth (World Bank, 1989). There was some limited acknowl-
edgement of thepolitical causesand contextof this crisis of governancein the
report but in practice it said little about the state or the politics of
development.Instead it focused single-mindedlyon managerialand adminis-
trative issues, as became clear in its formal statement on Governance and
Development (WorldBank, 1992b).In this and other Bank publications(such
as the influential World Development Report, 1991), the Bank committed
itself to the seemingly more apolitical and largely technical strategy of
improvinggovernance. Even this was somethingof a sleightof hand, for the
apparently politically-neutral recommendations presupposed profound
political change and represented not simply an economic vision but also a
politicalone. For what was advocated was a slim but efficientadministrative
state, detached from its prior pervasive involvement in economic matters.
While such a state might undertake basic investment in, and managementof,
essential physical and social infrastructure, its central role was to encourage
the free and fair play of market forcesin an impartial, open and accountable
manner (World Bank, 1991:4-1 1).
The political influenceof the neo-classicalcounter-revohtion
The Bank and the IMF have a remarkable operational autonomy and are
often independent sources of important development ideas and policy.
Politically, however, they are ultimately the creatures of their members. The
structure of votingpower in theseinstitutions is such that the influenceof the
USA, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and France is overwhelming
(World Bank, 1992c: 237). For this reason the new orthodoxy in Bank and
IMF policy came to reflect the emergingneo-liberal ascendancy in economic
theory and publicpolicy from the late 1970sin thesecountries(Killick, 1989:
9-20; Toye, 1987: ch. 2). However, neo-liberalism is not only an economic
doctrine but a political one as well, involving strong normative and func-
tionalist theories of politics and the state.
In normative terms neo-liberal theory celebratesindividualeconomicand
political freedom as representingthe good life itself. Beyond the preservation

7. The Politics of Development 369
of peace and order, it is hostileto state limitation on the rights of individuals,
irrespective of race, sex or creed. Neo-liberals, especially rightwing liber-
tarians such as Nozick (1974),also argue that state intervention in the econ-
omy or official discrimination imposes constraints on the inalienable rights
and liberties of individuals, interferes with freedom of choice, distorts the
free play of markets and thus harms economic development (D. C. Green,
1986: 82-90; Olsen, 1982: ch. 6).
In functional terms, neo-liberal political theory asserts that democratic
politics and a slim, efficient and accountable public bureaucracy are not
simply desirablebut also necessary for a thriving free market economy, and
viceversa, for the two are inextricablyimplicatedwith each other (Friedman
and Friedman, 1980:21). Neo-liberals thus regard an obese state apparatus
with a large stake in economic life as being both inefficient from an
administrativepoint of view and also incompatiblewith an independent and
vibrant civil society which is held to be the basis of effective democracy.
Hence neo-liberal developmentalists often argue that poor development
records and adjustment failures have been a direct consequence of authori-
tarian rule and deficientgovernance, all arisingfrom excessiveconcentration
of both economic and political power in the hands of the state (Lal, 1983:
103-9), which is incompatiblewith accountable and responsivegood gover-
nance in a free economy. This concentration of power also explains regime
reluctance or inability to institute political liberalization and bureaucratic
contraction. For all these reasons, resurgent neo-liberal theory from the end
of the 1970s spurred western governments and international institutions to
go on from promoting economicliberalization to making good governance
(and democracy) a condition of development assistance.
The collapseof communism
The collapse of Eastern European communist regimes was an important
strategic factor which helped to shape the emergence of western interest in
promoting good governance. The new international circumstances which
prevailed after 1990 meant that the west could now attach explicit political
and institutional conditions to its aid without fear of losing its third world
allies or clients to communism. The fate of twentieth-century communism
also served to confirm neo-liberaltheory that bureaucraticallysclerotic,non-
democratic collectivist systems were both unable to produce sustained
economicgrowth and unable to change. Corruption, economic mismanage-
ment, inefficiency and stagnation all flowed directly from their grotesque
bureaucraciesand lack of popular democraticparticipation. Political liberal-
ization, administrativedecentralization, reducing bureaucratic controls and
the promotion of good governance on the essentially western model were
seen as necessary conditions for economic liberalizationand growth (World
Bank, 1991: 20).

8. 370 Adrian Leftwich
This explicitlinkage of economicand political liberalismin the theory and
practice of good governaiiceis nowhere better illustrated than in the Articles
of Agreement of the new European Bank for Reconstruction and Develop-
ment (EBRD), established in 1991to help restructure the Eastern European
and former Soviet economies. Unlike the World Bank, it has typically neo-
liberal economic and political objectiveswhich are to ‘promote multi-party
democracy,pluralism and market economics’ (EBRD, 1991: Article 1).
The impact of the prodemocracy movements
Finally, the pro-democracy movements in Latin America, the Philippines
and latterly Eastern Europe in the 1980s stimulated similar movements
elsewhere (Huntington, 1991: ch. 1). In Africa, between 1989 and 1992,
internal and externalpressures prompted stepsin the directionof democrati-
zation in a host of countries, from Nigeria to Zaire and Guinea to Angola,
though seldom without profound resistance from incumbent regimes (Riley,
1991: 17-21). Democratization in Asia - though stalled in China and
Myanmar, for example - has advanced in the Philippines, South Korea,
Taiwan, Bangladesh and even Nepal. The west drew legitimacy for its pro-
democracy policies from these movements and can thus be said to be
supporting popular and intellectualdemands for good governance in those
societies(Ake, 1991).
Whilethe west may thus be said to be demonstratingits genuinepreference
for liberal democracy (other things being equal), some theorists are inclined
to see the contemporary orthodoxy as the most recent manifestation of the
onward march of global capitalism, which had been delayed by the bipolar
world (Barya, 1993: 1617; Gills and Rocamora, 1992: 506). What steps
marked the emergence of this new concern for good governance, and what
does it mean in practice?
GOODGOVERNANCE EMERGENCE AND MEANINGS
Emergence
The first officialappearance of the contemporary notion of good governance
came in the 1989World Bank report on Africa, which argued that ‘Underly-
ing the litany of Africa’s developmentproblems is a crisisof governance’,by
which was meant ‘theexerciseof political power to manage a nation’saffairs’
(World Bank, 1989: 60). This report was followed, between 1989and 1991,
by a steadyflowof pronouncementson governance,democracyand develop-
ment from a variety of sources.Theseincluded the OECD (1989); the Nordic
Ministers of Development (1990); the US, British and French governments

9. The Politics of Development 371
(Africa Conjidentiul, 1990; Chalker, 1991; Cohen, 1991; House of
Commons, 1990; Hurd, 1990);the Commission of the European Communi-
ties (CEC, 1991); the World Bank and the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP, 1991; World Bank, 1991, 1992b). The promotion of
good governance and democracy was in turn supported by many inter-
governmental and regional organizations such as the Organization for
African Unity (OAU), The European Council and the Commonwealth
Heads of Government (IDS Bulletin, 1993:7).
The views of these organizations on the relationship between governance,
the state and development were not identical. While some stressed democ-
racy or the protection of human rights, others emphasized sound adminis-
tration or, in the Bank's terms, management, as key causal factors in
development. All, however, failed to explore the kind of politics or state
which might be necessary for housinggood governance.Nonetheless, despite
these differencesand omissions,the underlying shape of the concept of good
governance soon became clear.
Meaning of good governance
Good governance can be said to have three main levels of meaning which
may be defined as systemic,politicaland administrative.First, from a broad
systemic point of view, the concept of governance is wider than that of
governmentwhich conventionally refers to the formal institutional structure
and location of authoritative decision-makingin the modern state. Govern-
ance, on the other hand, refers to a looser and wider distribution of both
internal and externalpolitical andeconomic power (Lofchie, 1989: 121-2). In
this broad sense,governancedenotesthe structuresof political and, crucially,
economic relationshipsand rules by which the productiveand distributivelife
of a societyis governed. In short, it refers to a system of politicaland socio-
economicrelations or, more loosely, a regime. In current usage there can be
no doubt that good governance in this systemic sense means a democratic
capitalist regime presided over by a minimal state which is part of the wider
governanceof the new world order (Chalker, 1991:2-3; House of Commons,
1990:Cols. 1235-1299).
The second,more limitedand obviouslypolitical senseof good governance
clearly presupposes such a regime. But it also explicitly means a state
enjoying legitimacy and authority, derived from a democratic mandate and
built on the traditional liberal notion of a clear separation of legislative,
executive and judicial powers. Whether presidential or parliamentary, this
presupposesa pluralist polity with a freely and regularly elected representa-
tive legislature, with the capacity at least to influence and check executive
power. This is the position of most western governments.
Finally, from a narrow administrative point of view, good governance
means an efficient,independent, accountableand open publicservice.This is.

10. 312 Adrian Leftwich
the World Bank’s position which is fully outlined in its latest definitive
statement on Governance and Development which treats good governanceas
‘synonymouswith sound developmentmanagement’(WorldBank, 1992b:1).
This policy document focuseson four main areas of publicadministration in
general and public sector management in particular, which it considers fall
within its mandate.
(i) Accountability, which in essence means holding officials responsible for
their actions.
(ii) A legalframeworkfor development, which means a structure of rules and
laws which provide clarity, predictabilityand stability for the private sector,
which are impartially and fairly applied to all, and which provide the basis
for conflict resolution through an independentjudicial system.
(iii) Information, by which is meant that information about economic
conditions, budgets, markets and government intentions is reliable and
accessible to all, somethingwhich is crucial for private sector calculations.
(iv) Finally, insistence on transparency is basically a call for open govern-
ment, to enhanceaccountability,limit corruption and stimulateconsultative
processes between government and private interests over policy develop-
ment.
It should be clear, then, that in its most extensive form the idea of good
governanceis not simply a new technical answer to the difficult problems of
development.Good governanceis best understood as an intimate part of the
emerging politics of the new world order. Clearly, the barely submerged
structural model and ideal of politics, economics and society on which the
notion of good governance rests is nothing less than that of western liberal
(or social)democracy-the focal concernand teleologicalterminusof much
modernization theory.
Whatever the merits and limitations of that world view, who could
possibly be against good governance, at least in its limited administrative
sense,as presented by the World Bank? For is it not the case that any society
-whether liberalor socialist-must be better o
f
fwith a public service that
is both efficientand honest, open and accountable,and with ajudicial system
that is independent and fair? In this sense, at least, the World Bank’s
conception of good governance is unexceptional: it re-identifiesprecisely the
principlesof administration that have long been argued as being of benefit to
developing countries. They are impeccably Weberian in spirit, if not letter
(Weber, 1964: 329-41). Even in the most unpromising third world circum-
stances, good governance in this limited adminstrative sense must be better
for development than its opposite, bad governance.
However, the Bank’s prescription for good governanceis naive, whereas
Weber’s was not (Beetham, 1974: ch.4), because it fails to recognize that
good governance is a function of state character and capacity which is in
turn a function of politics. In short, the failure to engage with the history,
practice and theory of the state as an agent in the developmentalprocess is

11. The Politics o
f Development 373
the major shortcomingof the contemporary preoccupation with governance
in development. For it has become clear that, at least in its critical early
stages, sustained economic growth in late developers (whether ‘market
friendly’ or not) is the product of patterns of politics which tend to
concentrate in the state both the political will and the bureaucratic com-
petence to establish a developmentalmomentum in a competitively hostile
international environment.It is these characteristicswhich distinguish devel-
opmental states from the general pattern of incompetent and often cruel
statism in the third world, as I will elaborate later. The fact that few states in
developing countries have had those capacities is entirely beside the point.
The point is that without such developmentalstates, the economicprospects
of most poor societieswill remain bleak. This ispreciselywhy the conception
of good governance, presented as the necessary administrative capacity for
development,is no substitute for a conception of the developmentalstate in
which the role of politics and the state is paramount. It is to this that I now
turn.
THEIDEA OF THE DEVELOPMENTAL STATE
Meaning and background
The idea that the governmentshould have a role in promoting development
is not new. However, in almost every context in which this issue has been
addressed, from Germany in the 1840s to Botswana in the 197Os, it has
always been profoundly political in origin and explicitly statist in focus.
In modern times, the idea may be traced back to Friedrich List’s classic
critique (1885) of Quesnay and Smith, where he argued that the ‘less
advanced nations’ first required ‘artificial means’ to catch up with the
advanced nations. It was the task of national political economy, and hence
the state, to ‘accomplishthe economical development of the nation and to
prepare it for admission into the universal society of the future’ (List, 1885:
175). Explicitly (and presciently, remembering Japan and Korea in the
twentieth century), List claimed that ‘a perfectly developed manufacturing
industry, an important mercantilemarine, and foreign trade on a really large
scale,can only be attained by means of the interposition of the power of the
State’ (1885: 178).
Marx too (in the second of his two main theories of the state) hinted at
something recognizable as a rudimentary developmental state (Marx,
1852: 238) when he referred to the ‘completelyautonomous position’ of the
state in France under Louis Bonaparte. This state arose as a result of a
balance of class forces in society, and so was not the captive of any, but
nonetheless acted to further the interests of capitalism in general. In Elster’s
opinion this version of the autonomous capitalist state was ‘thecornerstone’

12. 374 Adrian Leftwich
of Marx’s theory after 1850 (Elster, 1985: 426), and was later developed by
European Marxists, such as Poulantzas (1973). Moreover, Elster argues,this
theory corresponds well with the actual historical development of the
capitalist state in European development ‘as an active, autonomous agent
from the sixteenth century onwards, pursuing its own interestsby harnessing
those of others to its purposes’ (Elster, 1985: 426).
In the twentieth century, the idea of the state as an agent of development
came to be part of the officialpolicy of western colonial powers in the inter-
war years. However little they may have done in practice, colonial govern-
ments came to believe that they had a special role in promoting the socio-
economicprogress of the colonies and their people. Interestingly,in the light
of current officialtheory on the relationship of democracy and development,
the explicitly non-democratic corollary of this view was that political
advancement for the colonial peoples would (one day, perhaps) follow. All
this was based on a theory of politics and the state which held that
democratic self-governance was a consequence of economic development
and that ‘premature’ democratization was dangerous. These ideas were
explicit, for instance, in British colonial policy, especially after the rise of
colonial development and welfare provisions in the 1930s (Lee, 1967), and
were also embodied in the idea of the beamptenstaut (officialstate) in Dutch
Indonesia (McVey, 1982).
At the sametime, in the heart of Europe, drivenby the fiercelycompetitive
politics of nationalism and implemented by a ‘centralizing,integrative and
managerial state’, was the ‘developmental dictatorship’ of Italian fascism
(Gregor, 1979: 303). Regimes of this kind were not based on the Weberian
vision of a minimal state and a detached bureaucracy setting a framework
and impartiallyapplyingrules for private economicactors. On the contrary,
the whole purpose and structure of this kind of developmentaldriveinvolved
a ‘dynamic,interventionist and hegemonic state’ (Gregor, 1979: 314) which
would smash the old order and bring about the progressive victory of
modern capitalist industrialization. In short, it was a developmental state
structure based on the political energies of nationalism with industrial
modernization in its sights.
The notion that the state has much more than a minimal supervisory role
has been central to development theory and practice, especially in the post-
war era, and has also been an article of faith of economic planners and
development economists (Roberston, 1984: 7-68). But it was only when
political scientistsbegan to look at someof thepolitical characteristicsof the
economically more successful developing countries that preliminary ideas
about the provenance,structure and purposes of developmentalstates began
to form.
An early example of this was the concept of the ’bureaucratic polity’,
initially developed by Fred Riggs to explain the structure of the Thai state,
arising from its nationalist political origins and purposes after the ‘revolu-
tion’ against the absolute monarchy in 1932 (Riggs, 1966). In the 1970s this

13. The Politics of Development 375
notion of the bureaucratic polity was adapted to explain the particular forms
and featuresof the Indonesian state under Soeharto’sNew Order after 1966,
which has been very successfuldevelopmentally but bears no relationship to
any contemporary model of good governance. The bureaucratic polity in
non-democraticIndonesia has been described as a ‘politicalsystem in which
power and participation in national decisions are limited almost entirely to
the employeesof the state, particularly the officercorps and the highest levels
of the bureaucracy,including especially the highly trained specialistsknown
as the technocrats’(Jackson, 1978: 3). The military apart, this has also been
true for someof the successfuldevelopmentaldemocracies,such as Botswana
and Singapore, sometimes described as ‘administrative states’ (Crouch,
1984: 11;Picard, 1987:220). The political importance of bureaucratic polities
was stressed, too, by S. P.Huntington in the 1960s. He emphasized the
critical developmental significance of concentrating political power in a
modernizingand innovativestate. Such power was essential for the develop-
mental success of such states, especially in order to undertake the political
destruction of those existing ‘social forces, interests, customs and institu-
tions. ..’which have held back development and which continue to oppose
modernization (Huntington, 1968: 141-2).
Based on his work in South Asia (and India in particular), Gunnar Myrdal
(1970: 229)drew the elementarydistinctionbetween ‘soft’and ‘strong’states
in the third world. He was seeking to explain what he saw as the feeble
developmentalrecord of a weak Indian state, paralysed by the grip of special
interests and enervated by the society’s lack of ‘socialdiscipline’. What was
needed if Indian poverty was to be overcomewas not a minimal state but a
‘strong’ state, which could break free of the clamour and especially the
influence of the specialinterests.
Despitethese important contributions, it is only in the last fifteen years or
so that political scientistshave begun to look more closelyand comparatively
at the political causes and conditions which have enabled some states to be
capable of effective developmentalaction but not others (Nordlinger, 1987;
O’Donnell, 1979; Stepan, 1978). An interesting example was Ellen Trim-
berger’s political explanation of how autonomous and developmentally
progressive bureaucratic states have emerged in the third world. Focusing
comparatively on Japan, Turkey, Egypt and Peru, she argued that the
bureaucratic state apparatus achievedits relativeautonomy when, first, those
holding high military or civil office were not drawn from dominant landed,
commercial or industrial classes; and, second, where they did not immedi-
ately form close relations with these classes after achieving power (Trim-
berger, 1978: 4). Despite its limitations, her account offered insights into
some of the political and structural characteristicsof strong states.
In none of these early arguments was the term ‘developmental state’
explicitly used, nor was there much effort to specifyeither the preconditions
or characteristicsof this type of state. As in much developmenteconomicson
left and right (Gilliset al., 1992:25; Green, 1974:15@,thestatewasassigneda

14. 376 Adrian Leftwich
major role, but the politicalconditions for its effectivedischarge of that role
were never identified. Indeed, and significantly, it had been the failure by
political scientists to analyse the political anatomy of contemporary and
historical developmentalstates that, in part, allowed anti-statist theorists to
berate all state developmentalism, rather than discriminate between the
successfuland the unsuccessful.It was only with the publicationof Chalmers
Johnson’s seminal work on Japan (1982) that the phrase ‘developmental
state’ made its formal debut and that a serious attempt was made to
conceptualizeit.
Crucially,Johnson distinguishedthe ‘developmentalorientation’of sucha
state from the Soviet-typecommandeconomy state, on the one hand, and the
‘regulatoryorientation’ of the typical liberal-democraticstate, on the other
hand, which is the state idealthat liesat the heart of the contemporary theory
of good governance. He argued that while it was dedicated to the market
economy, the Japanese developmental state had nonetheless been pre-
eminent in ‘setting ... substantive social and economic goals’ (Johnson,
1982: 19)for market agents. The conventional regulatory state, by contrast
(as in good governancetheory),merely establishedthe legal and institutional
framework in which the private sector was left entirely free to set goals for
itself. A further feature of the developmental state was the power and
autonomy of its elitebureaucracywhich, in the Japanese case, was centred in
certain key ministries, notably the Ministry of International Trade and
Industry (MITI). The state in Japan sought and maintained intimate
relations with major actors in the private sector and sought their cooper-
ation. But it was dominant in setting and gaining agreement about far-
reaching national policy goals, which were largely determined by the
bureaucratic elite, the epicentreof decision-makingfor much of this century
(Fukui, 1992:200-7). Johnson finallystressedthat the Japanesedevelopmen-
tal state must always be understood politically. He argued that the prove-
nance of the Japanese developmental state lay essentially in the urgent
politicaland nationalist objectivesof the late developer,concerned to protect
and promote itself in a hostile world. ‘It arises from a desire to assume full
human status by taking part in an industrial civilization, participation in
which alone enables a nation or an individualto compel others to treat it as
an equal’ (Johnson, 1982: 25). In this respect Johnson echoes the argument
made by List about Germany in the 1840s;by Mussolini about Italy in the
inter-war years (Gregor, 1979);by Stalin in 1931(Deutscher, 1966: 328); by
the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party after 1949 (White, 1985:
208); and by President Park Chung-heein Korea in 1963(Lim, 1986:73).
There have been a variety of contributions to the theory and practice of
developmental states since then: by Gordon White in relation to socialist
states (1984, 1985); by White, Robert Wade, F. C. Deyo and others in
relation to East Asia (Deyo, 1987;White and Wade, 1985)and most recently
by Robert Wade in relation to Taiwan,under the revealingtitleManaging the
Market (Wade, 1990).

15. The Politics of Development 377,
Table 1. Selected average annual rates of growth of GNP per capita: 1965
to 1990 (%)
~~
A Democratic Regimes:
Jamaica
Trinidad and Tobago
Venezuela
Senegal
India
Sri Lanka
Malaysia
Costa Ria
Botswana
Mauritius
Singapore
-1.3
0.0
- 1.0
-0.6
1.9
2.9
4.0
1.4
8.4
3.2
6.5
B Non-democratic Regimes:
Zaire -2.2
Zambia - 1.9
Libya -3.0
Nigeria 0.1
South Korea
Taiwan
Indonesia
Brazil
China
Algeria
Thailand
7.1
7.0
4.5
3.3
5.8
2.4
4.4
~~ ~~ ~ ~~~
Sources: Council for Economic Planning and Development (1992); World Bank (1992a).
However, the important point to make about this body of work on the
state and the politics of development is that, unlike current theories of
governance, it has never sought to depoliticize the necessarily political
processes of developmentby emphasizingapparently technical bureaucratic
factors (‘Whate’er is best administered is best’). Nor has it sought to deflect
attention from the character, structure and purposesof the state which alone
can both provide the developmentalwill and also enablegood governance to
happen. Contrary to Pope’s view on the matter, contestationabout ‘formsof
government’is not a fool’s contest: it is a contest between differentinterests
about power and the institutions which distribute it (Przeworski, 1988: 64;
Rueschemeyer et al., 1992: 77). As the studies I have referred to above all
show, the form and distribution of power, and the manner of its use in and
through the state, are critical for development. Comparative empirical
evidence both illustratesand sustains this point, as the next section shows.
DEVELOPMENTAL
STATES
Table 1 shows that both democratic and non-democratic states have
achieved high average rates of growth since 1965.
From these data one may isolate a smallgroup of eight states which have
had average rates of growth in excess of 4 per cent per annum: Malaysia,
Botswana, Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, Indonesia, China and Thailand. In
most respectsthey could not be moredifferent. Apart from most being found
in East or South-east Asia, they differ profoundly with respect to size,
population, natural endowments, history, regime type, social and cultural
structure, religion and even economicpolicy. Yet, by any standard, they have

16. 378 Adrian Leftwich
all achieved remarkable developmentalrecords. What then do they have in
common that might explain their achievements?I suggestthat it is the nature
of theirpolitics (and especiallythe character of the states which these politics
have generated)that is central, not their modes of governance. A number of
common featureswhich these states share suggesta preliminarymodel of the
effective developmental state, which is very different to the model of good
governance.
(i) Whether democraticor not, developmentalstates have all been defacto
or de jure one-party states for much of the past thirty years, although in
general the democraticgroup (Botswana,Singaporeand Malaysia) have had
better human rights ratings than the non-democratic group (Thailand,
Indonesia, Taiwan, Korea and China) (Humana, 1987:xiv-xv). Whereasthe
non-democratic group has been ruled by military-backed authoritarian
regimes (Thailand has had short democratic interludes), the democratic
states have been ruled either by a singleparty (the BDP in Botswana and the
PAP in Singapore)or, as in Malaysia, by a coalition in which a single party
(UMNO) has dominated. The effect has been to concentrate very consider-
able and unchallenged political power at the top in these states, thus usually
enhancing political stability and continuity in policy.
(ii) These states have been dominated by purposeful and determined
developmentalClites, which have also been relatively uncorrupt, at least by
comparison with Haiti, Zaire and the Philippinesunder Marcos. As in Japan
(Muramatsu and Krauss, 1984), these states have also been characterizedby
a well-documented and intimate linkage between political leaders and top
bureaucrats (Crouch, 1979:576;Egedy, 1988:6 11;Liddle, 1992:448; Puthu-
cheary, 1978:40). The solidity of these Clites has been enhanced by a dense
traffic between the top levels of the civil and military bureaucracy and high
political office, something which is very rare in western liberal democracies
and entirelyalien to the contemporary philosophyand specificationsof good
governance theory. For instance, in 1984 almost half of the eleven cabinet
members in Botswana were former civil servants (Charlton, 1991: 273), as
has also been the case in Soeharto’s Indonesia (Crouch, 1979: 576). While
these Clites have regularly experiencedinternal differences, they all appear to
have been united by a determined national developmental objective, always
fuelled by varying combinations of political, ideological and nationalist
considerations, as well as internal and external security threats. The obvious
examples are South Korea’s and Taiwan’s fierce competition with North
Korea and China respectively, Thailand’s fear of regional communist
threats, Botswana’sanxiety for maximum economic development, given the
power and threat of South Africa, and Singapore’s concern about its
position, sandwiched between Islamic Indonesia and Malaysia.
(iii)A further sharedcharacteristicof the greatestimportancehas been the
relative autonomy of the developmentalClites and the state institutions which
they command. By this is meant that the state (or its leadership) has been
able to achieve relative independence from the demands of special interests

17. The Politics o
f Development 379
and could, and did, over-ridethem in the putative national interest (Crouch,
1984:13,32,75;Haggard, 1990b:264;Holm, 1988:187;Johnson, 1987:156-8;
Liddle, 1991; Nordlinger, 1987: 369-71; Wade, 1990:375-6). As with other
aspects of these states, this again is best explained politically with respect to
the routes by which the regimes came to power or retained it: either by
revolution,conquest or coup by modernizingelites(e.g. Thailand from 1923,
China from 1949, Korea from 1960, Taiwan from 1949, Indonesia from
1966),or by an electoralprocessthat has nonethelessconsistentlyyielded one
dominant party of government (as in Botswana, Malaysia and Singapore).
The combinedpoliticulstrength and continuity of thesedevelopmentalstates,
whetherdemocratic or not, has clearlydifferentiatedthem from others, such
as Jamaica, Sri Lanka, Nigeria or India.
(iv) Elite determination and the relative autonomy of the state has helped
to shape very powerful, highly competentand insulatedeconomicbureaucra-
cies with authority in directingand managing economicand social develop-
ment. The template for this might be thought of as MITI in Japan (as
Johnson pointed out) but examplesmay be found as far afieldasthe Ministry
of Finance and Development Planning in Botswana (Holm, 1988: 187-97),
the Economic Planning Board in Korea (Luedde-Neurath, 1985: 196) and
the considerable‘policy autonomy’ of the Economic Development Board in
Singapore (Haggard, 1990b: 113-14). What differentiates these economic
high commands (or ‘pilot agencies’in Johnson’s language) in developmental
states from the generality of planning institutions in so many developing
countries is their real power, authority, technical competence and insulation
in shaping development policy. Their existence, form and function, once
again, needs to be understood as a consequence of the politically-driven
urgency for development and the politics of a strong state, and not as an
attribute of the principles of good governance. Indeed, the idea of an
authoritative economic bureaucracy shaping the goals and strategy of
development policy fundamentallycontradicts the contemporary theory of,
and prescription for, good governance.
(v) In all developmental states, civil society has experienced weakness,
flatteningor control at the hands of the state. The institutions of civil society
(non-governmental organizations) have, at least until relatively recently,
been smashed, penetrated, dominated or come to be financed by the state. It
almost seems as if this has been a condition for the emergence and
consolidation of the developmentalstate. This is most evident in the harsher
authoritarian developmental states, such as China or Indonesia (Gold,
1990: 18-25; Sundhaussen, 1989: 462-3), but it has also been the case in
democratic developmental states, such as Botswana (Molutsi and Holm,
1990: 327). This has enhanced state power in ways that have been develop-
mentally useful, as the next point indicates.
(vi) The power, authority and relative autonomy of these states were
established at an early point in their modern developmental history, well
before national or foreign capital became important or potentialiy influen-

18. 380 Adrian Leftwich
tial. This, coupledwith the weakness of civilsociety,or its domination by the
state, has been significant in enhancing their capacities vis Ci vis private
economic interests, internal or external. It has given them much power in
determining the role which both foreign and national capital has played in
the developmentalprocess. This has been especially obviousin the battery of
instruments which, say, the Korean state assembled to bend national and
foreigncapitalto itsdevelopmentalpurposes(Johnson, 1987:160-4;Mardon,
1990:136).But it ismore or lesstrue for all the others, asin Malaysia (Bowie,
1991:ch.4). As Robert Wade haspointed out for Taiwan, this has led to these
societiesbeing described as ‘corporatist’in which the ‘leadership’role of the
statein economicmatters has been far more important than its ‘followership’
role (Wade, 1990: 295). Unlike Latin America, where powerful landed
interests, an emerging bourgeoisie and foreign capital have been deeply
embedded in political and economic life, developmental states in these
societieshave for long been the most powerful players in town.
(vii) Finally, there can be little doubt that, whether democratic or not,
these have not been particularly pleasant states by either liberal or socialist
standards. They have frowned on dissent, handed out rough and sometimes
brutal treatment to student, labour, political and religious organizations
which have opposed them, and have used a variety of internal security
measures to suppress, banish or eliminate opposition. Although it is notor-
iously hard to measure legitimacy, especially under these conditions, it is
therefore surprising that even some of the toughest of these regimes, as in
Indonesia, appear to have been ‘genuinelypopular’ (Liddle, 1992:450). This
is not to say that there have been no protests. On the contrary, these have
sometimes been bloody as in the Korean and Taiwanese labour struggles in
the 1980s(Belloand Rosenfeld, 1992:ch.l,13)or the regularstudent protests
in Bangkok or more recently in Tiananmen Square. But it is at least worth
hypothesising that the endurance of this strange mixture of repression and
legitimacy in the politics of these societiesis best explained by the generally
positive overall effectsof the rapid growth which it has helped to deliver, at
least as measured by the Human Development Index (HDI). On key
indicators of improvement such as per capita income, life expectancy and
educational attainment, thesedevelopmentalstates have deliveredthe goods.
Of 160 countries ranked on a world basis, Korea, Singapore and Malaysia
are in the top 30 per cent, with the others in the top 60 per cent (UNDP,
1992:20),way ahead of India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Egypt, Kenya and Bolivia,
for instance.
The distinguishing characteristic of developmentalstates, then, has been
that their institutional structures (especially their economic bureaucracies)
and political objectiveshave been developmentally-driven,while their devel-
opmental purposes have been politically-driven. In short, fundamentally
political factors have shaped the thrust and pace of their developmental
strategies through the structures of the state. These factors have normally
included nationalism, ideology, a wish to ‘catchup’ with the west, as well as

19. The Politics o
f Development 381
defensive and security/militaryconcerns, all commonly fuelled by regional
competition and, sometimes, hostility.
CONCLUSIONS
It is important to welcome the belated interest that international develop-
ment institutions like the World Bank have begun to take in questions of
governance,but I have tried to show that their current approaches are naive
and limited in their failureto recognize the centrality of politics and the state
in development, Good governance is not simply a function of institution-
building or heavy doses of training (World Bank, 1991: 234-s), desirable as
they may be. Moreover, good governance, in its limited current conception,
is not likely to generatemuch development on its own. Neither sophisticated
institutional innovations nor the best-trained or best-motivated public
service will be able to withstand the withering effects of corruption or resist
the developmentally-enervating pulls of special or favoured interests if the
politicsand authority of the state do not sustain and protect them. To expect
that stern conditionalitywill yield good governanceand hence development
in, say, Haiti, Zaire or Myanmar, without recognizing the enormity of the
political change that is required for it to happen, is to commit the ultimate
technicist error.
If overcoming the continuing offence of poverty, ignorance and disease is
the real objective, then calling weakly for good governance in states which
cannot sustain it is not likely to help much in many parts of the developing
world. For the remarkable achievements of the societiesdiscussed have not
been a function of the kind of depoliticized governancenow being urged on
other developing societies. On the contrary, their growth has been master-
minded by developmentalstates (both democraticand non-democratic);that
is, states whose politics have concentrated sufficient power, probity, auton-
omy and competence at the centre to shape, pursue and encourage the
achievementof explicit and nationally-determineddevelopmentalobjectives,
whether by establishingand promoting the conditions of economicgrowth,
by organizing it directly, or by a varying combination of both. It has only
been on the basis of their successthat some are now beginning to extend or
implement democratic processes.
At almost every point, then, the models of good governance and the
developmentalstate are in conflict. Current official theories of good govern-
ance eulogize the minimal state, a Weberian-type bureaucracy, rigorous
respect for human rights, a rich and diverse civil society, political pluralism
and a sharp separation of economic and political life. Uncomfortable as it
may be to acknowledgeit, the model of the developmentalstate, on the other
hand, whetherdemocraticor not, entailsa strong and determined state which
protects a powerful and competent bureaucracy that largely shapes and
directs development policy, a dubious (and sometimes appalling) civil and

20. 382 Adrian Leftwich
human rights record, the suppressionor control of civil societyand a fusion
-at least at the top -of the political direction of economicpower. Above
all, both the idea and practice of developmentalstates illustrate not simply
the importance, but the primacy of politics and the state in development,
whereas the somehow lifeless notion of ‘good governance’ has been evac-
uated from them. For all these reasons, in both the analysisand promotion
of development,it is time to bring politics back in.
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Adrian Leftwich is SeniorLecturerin Politicsat the University of York
(Heslington, York YO1 5DD), where he specializes in the politics of
development. He is currently working on a comparative study of
developmentalstates.Amongst his publicationsare Redefining Politics:
People, Resources and Power (Methuen, 1983)and States o
f Develop-
ment (Polity, forthcoming 1994).